Sunday, January 26, 2014

Shone vs. Shined, Lit vs. Lighted

Has it become okay to change irregular past verbs like lit and shone to lighted and shined?

The answer to the first part of the question is that irregular verbs
have been in a state of flux for centuries, so I suppose that it’s
always “okay” to change them.

The dominant tendency in English has been for irregular past tense
forms to be replaced by the “regular” -ed past tense ending. For
example, the past participle of help used to be holpen:

Now, when they shall fall, they shall be holpen with a little help… –KJV, Daniel 11:34

As only about 300 strong verbs (what we call “irregular” verbs)
existed in the Old English spoken and written a thousand years ago, I
think it’s amazing that any of them have survived into modern English.The reader who posed the question implied that writing lighted and shined for lit and shone must have something to do with American spelling habits:

I’m from Canada and we often struggle between American and British rules.

A persistent misconception is that when American usage differs from
British usage, the American version must be a corruption. I’ve received
many a comment comparing American English to “real English,” as if
Standard American English (SAE) were a usurper of the “real thing.” The
fact is, King Alfred would have as much difficulty in understanding
Queen Elizabeth II as he would President Obama. Both SAE and BrE flow
from the same source, but both have traveled a long way from it.

Generally speaking, shone and lit are preferred in British English and shined and lighted in American English. Both the OED and Merriam-Webster show the inflected forms lighted/lit and alighted/alit. In both dictionaries, the -ed form is listed first.

Generalities aside, both weak (regular) and strong (irregular) past
tense forms are in use on both sides of the Atlantic. I grew up in the
American South and was quite comfortable saying “Mother lit the birthday
candles,” and “The sun shone all day long.”

The verb shine is used with two meanings:

shine: of a heavenly body or an object that is alight; to shed beams of bright light

shine: to cause to shine, put a polish on

According to some authorities, context determines whether an American speaker will use shone or shined. when speaking of the sun or some other object that emits light:

The transitive form of the verb “shine” is ”shined.” If
the context describes something shining on something else, use “shined”:
“He shined his flashlight on the skunk eating from the dog dish.” You
can remember this because another sense of the word meaning “polished”
obviously requires “shined”: “I shined your shoes for you.” –Paul
Brians, professor emeritus, Washington State University.

As for shine in the sense of “to polish,” British speakers
would say neither “I shined your shoes for you,” nor “I shone your shoes
for you.” For a statement in the past, they would probably use the verb
polish: “I polished your shoes for you.”

Now for the really interesting bit: The OED tells us that irregular
shone is unrecorded in Old English and appears only once in Middle
English. The form shined was in common use from 1300-1800. The form
shone first appeared as a past participle in the second half of the 16th
century.

As for the forms lighted and alighted (to descend from a horse or conveyance), these -ed forms were in use before the 16th century.

Shakespeare uses lighted in the “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” solioquy in Macbeth:

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.

My conclusion is that shined and lighted are no less “okay” than shone or lit. But then, my dialect is American English.

Note: British speakers pronounce shone to rhyme with gone; for Americans, shone rhymes with bone.